Dozens of Russian Groups Steal 50 Million User Passwords

Phil Muncaster / EMEA News Reporter

Source : https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/dozens-russian-groups-steal-50/

Security researchers have warned of a password-theft epidemic after revealing that Russian groups are using off-the-shelf info-stealing malware to devastating effect.

Group-IB said its analysis revealed 34 Telegram groups used by threat actors to organize their efforts, and that they’d infected over 890,000 user devices and stolen over 50 million passwords in the first seven months of 2022 alone.

The security vendor said each of these groups has as many as 200 active members. Many are well organized, and are used to participate in automated scam-as-a-service campaigns targeting marketplaces known as “Classiscam.”

In these campaigns, administrators give work to lower rank “workers” in exchange for a cut of the profits. These workers in turn drive traffic to scam websites masquerading as well-known companies and try to trick victims into downloading malicious files.

They do so by embedding links for downloading info-stealers into video reviews of popular games on YouTube, through mining software or NFT files on specialized forums, as well as lucky draws and lotteries on social media, Group-IB said.